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The Presidency and the Executive Branch in Latin America.
What We Know and What We Need to Know
Alejandro Bonvecchi*
Carlos Scartascini**
*Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
**Inter-American Development Bank
Abstract
The literature about presidential politics depicts presidents either as all powerful actors or decorative
figureheads subservient to other institutions or players, and seeks to explain political and economic
outcomes accordingly. But regardless of its centrality for understanding policies and politics, the
president and the executive branch are usually treated as black boxes, particularly in developing
countries, despite the fact that the presidency has evolved from a small, unified and centralized entity
into an extremely complex branch of the government. While students of the US presidency have
investigated these developments, the knowledge gap is wide for other countries, particularly in Latin
America, where presidential systems reign and have been considered the source of all goods and evils.
To help close the knowledge gap and simultaneously contribute to understanding differences in
policymaking characteristics not only between Latin America and the US but also across Latin American
countries, this paper summarizes the vast literature on the organization and resources of the Executive
Branch in the Americas and sets a research agenda on the pending questions in the study of Latin
American presidencies.
Keywords: President, executive branch, policymaking process, institutionalization, cabinet, civil service,
bargaining, budget process, legislatures
JEL Codes: D78, D73, H00
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"The second office of the government is honorable and easy; the
first is but a splendid misery” -Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, PA
1797.1
“In government, for one to be able to do 50% of what one wants,
one must allow the others to do 50% of what they want. One has to
have the skill so that the 50% one gets to do is what really matters.
Those who always want to have their way end up not having it at all”.
- Juan Domingo Perón.2
1. Introduction
Presidents and presidential systems have long been under scrutiny in the political science and political
economy literatures. Presidents are often singled out and blamed or rewarded for the state of the
economy and public affairs.3 This kind of accountability is useful to understand why presidents may have
an incentive to keep government expenditures in check (Persson and Tabellini 2000, 2003) and finances
under control even in the context of discretion on the use of the public monies (Alston et al 2008, 2009),
as well as why in the short run presidents may also exploit their powers to manipulate the economy
before elections if left unchecked (Alesina et al 1997). But these insights do not shed light on how the
presidency is organized to operate under these incentives, or on what resources presidents may employ
to take advantage of opportunities or adapt to change.
The presidential system of government, in turn, has also been singled out in the literature, mostly as the
culprit behind the democratic instability experienced by Latin America throughout the 20th century (Linz
and Valenzuela 1994). While recent research on regime stability (Cheibub 2002a, 2002b, 2007) and
coalition politics (Zelaznik 2001, Amorim Neto 2006, Chasquetti 2008) has seriously disputed the
indictment against presidentialism, an analysis of how the organization and resources of the presidency
shape public policies as well as presidential and regime survival is still pending.
Thus, despite the importance and recurrence of the debate about presidents and presidential systems,
and regardless of the relevance of presidents in the policymaking process, the advancement of the
literature has been uneven. The literature on presidential politics has typically dealt with four topics: the
organization of the executive branch of government; the resources of the presidency; the coalitions
1 In The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson, page 716
2 In Perón, Juan Domingo (1988): Conducción Política, Buenos Aires: Megafón.
3 Sometimes even perceived as the cause behind earthquakes:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/indonesia/6259005/Indonesians-blame-earthquake-on-
unlucky-president.html
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supporting the presidents; and the specifics of decision-making in particular presidential
administrations. Students of the United States presidency have generated a wealth of work on all these
topics, but the development of research and knowledge on them for Latin America and other developing
countries has not kept the same pace across some of the topics.4 While significant pieces have been
produced on coalition-building and management as well as on economic and political decision-making in
particular administrations, there has been remarkably little advance on the organization of the executive
branch and the resources of the presidency. This paper intends to contribute to filling in this gap by
proposing a research agenda on the organization and resources of the presidency and their effects on
policymaking processes.
Research on coalition politics in Latin America has established that coalition governments are frequent
(Deheza 1997; Amorim Neto 1998, 2006; Zelaznik 2001; Martinez-Gallardo 2005, 2010a; Chasquetti
2008); that they are more unstable than single-party governments but less unstable than minority
single-party governments (Zelaznik 2001; Amorim Neto 2006; Martinez-Gallardo 2005); and that
presidents structure their cabinets in order to maximize the chances of survival of their legislative
coalitions (Amorim Neto 1998, 2002, 2006; Zelaznik 2001; Martinez-Gallardo 2005, 2010b). Studies have
also shown that the office of the president is typically endowed with resources to help build and
maintain cabinet and legislative coalitions (Pereira and Mueller 2002; Pereira et al. 2006; Amorim Neto
2006), and that presidents are generally effective in employing these resources for such purposes
(Pereira and Mueller 2002; Amorim Neto 2006). These works have demonstrated that Latin America has
mostly proactive presidents who are able, due to their constitutional and partisan powers, to impose
themselves on assemblies that, precisely due to those institutional imbalances, are mostly reactive
(Shugart and Carey 1992; Carey and Shugart 1998; Cox and Morgenstern 2002).
Research on economic and political decision-making has established the existence of common trends in
policy orientation and in decision-making sequences on economic adjustment (Haggard and Kaufman
1992, 1995; Torre 1998, Schamis 1999, 2002), pension reform (Mesa-Lago and Muller 2002; Weyland
2005, 2007), and left-wing social and political turns (Levitsky and Roberts 2008; Weyland et al. 2010).
Numerous studies have also shown the effects of diverse political variables on presidential decision-
making, such as president-government party relations (Corrales 2000, 2002), the socioeconomic nature
of reform coalitions (Schamis 1999; Etchemendy 2001), union political strategies (Murillo 2001), political
party types (Levitsky 2003), legislative career patterns (Ames 2001; Samuels 2003), constitutional
powers (Negretto 2006), public opinion standing (Stokes 2001; Echegaray 2005), and presidential
leadership (Novaro and Palermo 1996; Whitehead 2010). These works have demonstrated that while
4 As an example, a major publication such as The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions includes a chapter about
The American Presidency but has not similar chapter either for presidents in general and even less so for
presidents in developing countries. Despite its advancement, strong quantitative analysis is still lacking and much
work still ahead. As Howell points out “It remains to be seen whether scholars can build a vibrant and robust body
of quantitative scholarship on the presidency” (Howell 2006: 318)
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presidential administrations in Latin America differ in their outcomes, their stability and even their
survival (Perez-Linan 2007), these differences are underpinned by common variables and processes.
However, no equivalent knowledge exists on the organization of the executive branch and the resources
of the presidency. This gap, somewhat surprising considering the importance that the aforementioned
literature itself concedes to the office of the president, rests on two main shortcomings: the lack of a
theoretical and methodological agenda; and the lack of information with which to feed the development
of empirical research. This paper intends to contribute to the solution of the first of those shortcomings.
To this end, it purports to develop a research agenda on the organization of the executive branch, the
resources of the presidency and their effects on policymaking by resorting to what constitutes the
undisputed benchmark for such feat: the literature on the US presidency. Taking stock of the
approaches and the knowledge produced on those topics by students of the US presidency, this paper
identifies a set of relevant pending questions on Latin American presidencies as well as research
strategies for their investigation.
The paper is organized as follows. The first section deals with the literature on the organization of the
executive branch. The second section takes up contributions about the resources of the presidency. The
third section reviews the literature on the effects of executive branch organization and presidential
resources on policymaking processes and outcomes. Each section begins by taking stock of the literature
on the US presidency, subsequently reviews in comparative perspective the works about Latin America,
and ends by proposing a set of research questions still pending for the study of Latin American
presidencies. The concluding section sums up these research questions and suggests how to move
forward into addressing them.
2. The Organization of the Executive Branch.
One of the main contributions of the literature on the US presidency to the study of the executive
branch in presidential systems of government has been the insights about its internal organization. This
literature has produced descriptive findings and explanatory accounts of that organization. Descriptive
research has established that the executive branch is a complex, differentiated organization typically
made up of three components: the presidential center, the cabinet, and a series of advisory networks in
which cabinet members and presidential advisers interact alongside bureaucratic officials and even non-
governmental counselors. Explanatory research has argued that this organizational structure can be
explained by either informational needs or institutional incentives of the president. Studies have also
attempted to show connections between the organization of the presidential staff and presidential
management styles. This section reviews the research on each of these components and outlines a
series of questions that still need to be addressed in the study of Latin American presidential politics.
Consistent with the literature’s main foci of interest, this review will be primarily concerned with the
nature of each component of the executive branch, its relation to the president, its stability throughout
the president’s term, and its participation in decision-making.
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2.1. The Presidential Center.
In presidential systems, constitutions and/or special legislation typically outline the executive branch of
government as headed by a president assisted by cabinet departments, or ministries, functionally
differentiated by policy area and charged with advising the president on their specific turf. But apart
from cabinets, presidents are also assisted by a closer group of advisers with no departmental
responsibilities who work under their most direct supervision. These advisers constitute the office of the
president – or presidential center.
The presidential center has been a relatively recent development within the organization of the
executive branch. Presidents have always had confidants and close advisers, but the institutionalization
of their role did not come about in the United States until the late 1930s, when the Executive Office of
the President (EOP) was created under the auspices of the Roosevelt administration. The rationale for
the establishment of the EOP appears to have been the strengthening of the president’s ability to
coordinate the work of cabinet departments and other executive agencies which, due to their own
organizational interests such as budgetary or power maximization and service delivery to constituents
and interest groups, typically have “little incentive to subjugate their departmental needs to the
president’s broader bargaining interests” (Dickinson 1997: 46). This rationale points to a bi-dimensional
explanation of the emergence of the presidential center: on the one hand, as a device to solve
informational asymmetries within the executive branch that might hurt the president’s decision-making
ability; on the other hand, as an artifact to secure the political leadership of the president.
The informational explanation of the presidential center stems from the bargaining paradigm of
presidential politics espoused by the ultimate classic on the US presidency, Richard Neustadt’s
Presidential Power (Neustadt 1990). According to this paradigm, in a political system of separated
institutions sharing power (Jones 1994) presidents are forced to bargain with other actors – Congress,
the bureaucracy, interest groups, and the media – in order to influence the outcomes of government. To
bargain effectively, presidents’ primary need is information; except not just any information, but
information that enables them to retain or augment their influence over those other actors with which
they have to bargain – contrasting information, from multiple sources, so that presidents can weigh in
the biases and interests of those sources and come up with their own assessment and decisions
(Neustadt 1990; Rudalevige 2002). The presidential center allows presidents to do exactly that: multiply
information sources by charging close advisers with duplicating, supervising or monitoring the task of
cabinet ministers (Ponder 2000); and contrast policy ideas and political assessments by inciting dissent
between ministers and advisers (Neustadt 1990; Dickinson 1997). The presidential center helps
presidents to retain bargaining power by enabling them to escape the informational asymmetries to
which they are inevitably prey: that of ministries concerned primarily with their own turf; that of
bureaucrats concerned primarily with technical criteria and interest group satisfaction; that of political
advisers concerned primarily with the electoral consequences or public opinion payoffs of decisions.
The leadership explanation of the presidential center stems from the unilateral paradigm of presidential
politics espoused by the leading rational-choice scholar on the US presidency, Terry Moe. According to
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this paradigm, presidents have strong incentives to enhance the autonomy of their office: they are
elected by a national constituency that “leads them to think in grander terms about social problems and
the public interest”; they are held responsible for “virtually every aspect of national performance”; and
they are beset by powerful players – namely Congress and the bureaucracy – with opposing incentives
and enough institutional resources to impose them. To assert their leadership over these players,
presidents seek to design and run “a unified, coordinated, centrally directed bureaucratic system” (Moe
and Wilson 1994: 11) through which they can develop their own policy ideas and use their own
unilateral institutional powers to implement them. The presidential center allows presidents to do
exactly that: centralize decision-making by placing trusted advisers to supervise or simply lead cabinet
ministries from above and control the bureaucracy by imposing a hierarchical decision-making process
through which not only policy alternatives but also information diffusion and political message are
decided at the top (Moe 1993; Moe and Howell 1999). The presidential center helps presidents to lead
the government and the policy process by enabling them to escape the institutional constraints to which
they are inevitably prey in a separation-of-powers system, and to attune their decisions to the general
mood of public opinion over the particularistic interests of legislators, ministers, and bureaucrats.
Regardless of the weight that each explanation may actually have, the emergence of the presidential
center has been linked to the centralization of the policymaking process by the executive branch in
general, and particularly to the hierarchization of that process under the presidency.5 The increasing
political and administrative relevance of the presidential center has consequently induced scholars to
focus on its composition, its relation to presidents, the stability of its membership and functions, and its
participation in decision-making.
Composition and characteristics
The composition of the presidential center has been investigated with particular emphasis on two
dimensions: the types of staff constituting it, and the size of that staff. The premise of this line of
research has been that the kinds of persons recruited to the presidential staff and the ways its
operations are organized are the critical conduits through which presidents can influence the
performance and outcomes of their government (Burke 2000: 25). Presidents may surround themselves
only with cronies and clerks, or with political and policy advisers with independent standing; advisers
may be pundits or seasoned political operatives, learned students of policy or experienced policymakers,
political system insiders or novice outsiders (ibid.). Presidents may organize their staff in a hierarchical,
competitive or collegial way (Johnson 1974); they may develop staff structures congruent to the
challenges of their decision settings (Walcott and Hult 1995); or may suspend centralization altogether
contingent to critical variables in their political and bureaucratic environment (Rudalevige 2002).
The types of staff recruited to the presidential center in the United States have evolved from an
exclusively organizational capacity to a complex network of personal assistants, policy advisers, political
5 However, there is little consensus among scholars as to the extent, the consistency, and the effects of this
centralization of policymaking. See section 3 for further discussion.
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strategists, communication personnel, and legal counselors (Arnold 1998; Lewis 2008). When the EOP
was created in 1939, it comprised five agencies with distinct types of staff and functions: the White
House Office, where the president’s personal assistants – secretaries, chauffeurs – and closest political
advisers sat; the Bureau of the Budget, a highly institutionalized executive agency (Stewart 1989)
charged with elaborating the yearly budget and reviewing legislative proposals from cabinet
departments; the National Resources Planning Board, a New Deal agency specialized in long-term policy
planning; the Liaison Office for Personnel Management, which operated as linkage to the independent
Civil Service Commission; and the Office of Government Reports, which pulled together several
information-producing agencies (Dickinson 1997). But since the Cold War the scope of EOP functions
and staff types has significantly increased, with the establishment of the Council of Economic Advisers
(1946), the National Security Council (1947), the Office of the US Trade Representative (1963), the
Council on Environmental Quality (1969), the Office of Policy Development (1970), the Office of the
Vicepresident (1972), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (1976), the Office of Administration
(1977), the Office of National Drug Control Policy (1988), and the Homeland Security Staff (2001)
(Dickinson 2005). In addition to this, the White House Office experienced its own internal
differentiation: between personal assistants to the president, communications officers, political
advisers, and legal counselors (Sullivan 2004).
The expanded scope of direct presidential jurisdiction has been explained as the joint outcome of
environmental pressures for increasing government activity, congressional action in response to those
pressures, and particular presidential initiatives to seize control over specific policymaking areas
(Ragsdale and Theis 1997). But such increasing complexity within the presidential center also appears to
have pressured presidents into concentrating the control of decision-making in their own office in
detriment of the very agencies established within the EOP. This dynamics has generated what has been
labeled the paradox of politicization: the recruitment of politically loyal but administratively
inexperienced aids into the EOP has increased presidential control over decisions but diminished the
technical ability of EOP agencies to advice the president on policy matters (Dickinson 2005).
Environmental pressures and politicization may have thus driven the growth of the presidential staff
(Lewis 2008) but not necessarily that of its technical capacity.
The staff in the presidential center of the United States does not seem to enjoy much stability. Four not
necessarily exclusive explanations have been advanced for this pattern. One is partisan turnover: when
the governing party is ousted, most of the presidential staff is also changed. Another is the duration of
organizational units within the presidency – which, though increasing since the 1950s, has varied
considerably from one year to another, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1970s (Ragsdale and
Theis 1997). A third explanation is administrative overhaul, which has been frequent in the 20th century
(Arnold 1998). A fourth explanation is the changing nature of presidential campaigns – which has forced
prospective presidents to invest more on specialized campaign staff rather than policy or administrative
experts, and has thus led to increased turnover rates after the campaign-turned-governing staff proves
inadequate for their new function (Dickinson and Dunn Tempas 2002). High turnover rates help foster
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centralization of decision-making in the president but, at the same time, increase the leverage of career
bureaucrats over the policymaking process.
The tradeoffs between centralization and isolation before bureaucracy, between politicization of the
administration and technical expertise, suggest that the staff in the presidential center must perform
several functions within decision-making processes. Research has defined these functions according to
the specialization of staff types (Walcott and Hult 1995), or to forms of staff involvement in the policy
process (Ponder 2000). The staff specialization perspective, stemming from organization theory, argues
that the president’s staff participates in decision-making in either of three capacities: outreach, policy
processing, and coordination and supervision. Outreach tasks include liaison with Congress, press
relations and publicity, contacts with interest groups, executive branch staffing operations, and
presidency-executive branch relations management. Policy processing, in turn, encompasses
information gathering, analysis and proposals in domestic, economic, and national security policy – as
well as in specific inter-branch policy structures such as task forces or commissions. Finally, coordination
and supervision include speechwriting, managing the president’s schedule, and governing the
presidential center itself (Walcott and Hult 1995). Each of these tasks falls to different offices within the
White House, and each office is staffed either by specialists whose specialization is based upon previous
government experience, or by novices who owe their jobs to their campaign work, their party
connections, or their personal relation to the president (Lewis 2008).
The staff involvement perspective, privy to information theory, argues that the president’s staff has
three ways of participating in decision-making: as director, facilitator, or monitor (Ponder 2000). The
staff as director centralizes policymaking tasks and reports only to the president. The staff as facilitator
brokers agreements among policy jurisdictions under the president’s supervision. The staff as monitor
delegates policy to other agents within the executive branch but “keeps a watchful eye on the progress
and substance of policy development” (ibid: 14). These forms of involvement in the policy process need
not be exclusive of any particular staff member or structure; in fact, according to Ponder, presidents
practice “staff shift” – the movement of staff members and structures from one function to another – in
tune with the issue at hand and the availability of technical expertise and political capacity to control the
substance of policy outcomes (Rudalevige 2002).
Relationship
This organizational complexity transforms the relationship between presidents and their staff into a
critical issue. To work with their staff, presidents have developed different managerial styles. Drawing
from management theory, Johnson (1974) identified three: a competitive style, in which the president
stands at the center of decisions by fostering the overlapping of jurisdictions, the duplication of
assignments, and the development of rivalries; a formalistic or hierarchical style, in which the president
delegates authority on top advisers who run a hierarchical organization with clearly specified,
differentiated functions, and who filter the information and policy alternatives that reach the
presidential desk; and a collegial style, in which the president operates as the hub of a wheel the spokes
of which are a group of advisers who discuss and propose collectively to their boss. As Johnson argued,
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each style has its own strengths and weaknesses: the competitive style maximizes presidential control
and considerations of bureaucratic feasibility and political viability in decision-making, but demands an
enormous investment of time from the president to manage and solve staff tensions; the formalistic
style maximizes diversity in information gathering and advice, but may generate upwards distortions
and slowness in crisis situations; the collegial style maximizes technical optimality and bureaucratic
feasibility, but requires skilled presidential management to maintain a working group dynamics (Burke
2009).
Inspired by organizational theory, Walcott and Hult (1995: 20) argued that managerial styles are a
function of staff structures, and that presidents develop staff structures that are “roughly congruent
with the prevailing decision setting”. Thus, if presidents are confronting decision settings plagued with
uncertainty, they should build staff structures that foster the search for alternative sources of
information and advice, such as competitive or collegial arrangements. If presidents face decision
settings marred by controversy, they should design structures that find and articulate the contending
parties and viewpoints, such as adversarial multiparty advocacy or adjudicative arrangements in which
the president decides after thorough debate. If presidents encounter decision settings marked by
certainty, they should develop staff structures oriented to enhance control over decision-making, such
as hierarchical or collegial-consensual arrangements (ibid: 21-23).
Combining the above perspectives with transaction-cost theory, Rudalevige (2002) contended that
presidential centralization of the policy process was contingent upon the costs of acquiring information,
and those costs were, in turn, dependent on a number of political variables such as divided government,
size of presidential legislative contingent, presidential public opinion approval rates, ideological distance
between the president and the legislature, policy area, issue complexity, crisis situation, and length of
the presidential term. Presidents would only centralize decision-making in their office when they can
acquire information to do so at the least possible cost – i.e. when policy proposals cross-cut
jurisdictions, the presidential center has stronger policymaking resources, policy approaches are new,
and speed is of the essence (ibid: 39). Consequently, managerial styles should change according to the
conditions that determine information costs, and staff structures within the presidential center should
be prepared to deal with all possible contingencies.
Evidence in LAC
Research on presidential centers in Latin America is practically non-existent. Bonvecchi and Palermo
(2000) compared the staff types within the presidential inner-circles of Menem and de la Rua in
Argentina, as did Siavelis (2010) for the Concertacion governments in Chile, but their evidence is more
impressionistic than systematic. Aninat and Rivera (2009) described the functions of the presidential
center in the latter administrations, but with a normative orientation towards proposing a
reorganization of the executive branch. Bonvecchi and Zelaznik (2010a) reviewed the Argentine
Executive’s governing tools, but left out the organizational resources.
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A significant field of research is thus open. What countries have and do not have a presidential center?
What are the conditions for the emergence of presidential centers in Latin America? How are
presidential centers structured? What types of staff are presidential centers made of? How is that staff
managed by the president: competitively, hierarchically, or collegially? How stable are staff structures,
staff types and presidential managerial styles in presidential centers? What accounts for (potential)
variations? To answer these questions at least two types of information must be collected. On the one
hand, legal and administrative information about the structure of presidential centers, its evolution
through time, formal powers attached to each component of the presidential center, and the types of
staff recruited. On the other hand, qualitative and quantitative information on the relation between
presidents and their presidential center: frequency and nature of interaction between presidents and
the different types of staff; forms of staff involvement in decision-making processes; staff turnover
rates, etc. To process this information, at least two research strategies would be profitable. One is
quantitative statistical analysis of the interaction between the aforementioned dimensions of the
presidential center as dependent variables, and a series of independent variables of standard use in
studies of the institutionalization of the presidency: legislative strength of the president’s party; formal
powers of the president; presidential popularity; length of presidential term; economic context; growth
of government size; growth of government structural complexity; etc. Another research strategy is social
network analysis of the relationship between presidents and their staff, in which the frequency, nature,
and volume of interactions among presidents and different types of staff indicate the importance of
each staff type in decision-making processes, and enable the reconstruction of presidential managerial
styles and their application to specific policymaking processes or decisions.
Table 1 summarizes the findings of the US literature, the evidence available for Latin America, and the
research questions emerging from the knowledge gap.
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Table 1 – State of the Art and Research Agenda on the Presidential Center
Topic United States Latin America Research Agenda
Emergence Bargaining Paradigm:
reduction of
information
asymmetries to protect
bargaining power
Leadership Paradigm:
centralization of
decision-making
No data
Countries with
presidential centers
Conditions for
presidential center
emergence
Composition Types of staff:
increasing complexity in
response to increasing
scope of government
activity
Staff sizes: unstable due
to partisan turnover,
organizational
instability,
administrative
overhaul, and changing
specialization
Staff types in Argentina
and Chile
Staff structures in Chile
Staff types
Staff structures
Cross-country and
cross-presidency
variations
Relationship to
President
Contingent to
leadership styles:
competitive,
hierarchical, collegial
Contingent to staff
specialization: outreach,
policy processing,
coordination and
supervision
Contingent to staff
involvement: director,
facilitator, monitor
Leadership style in
Argentina
Staff specialization and
staff involvement in
Chile
Leadership styles
Forms of staff
involvement
Staff specialization
Cross-country and
cross-presidency
variations
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2.2. The Cabinet.
The role of the cabinet within the executive branch in presidential systems of government has
experienced a paradoxical development: while on the one hand the number, size, and policy
responsibilities of cabinet ministries have grown over the past decades, on the other hand their
participation in decision-making processes has been increasingly contested by the presidential center
and by presidents themselves. These tendencies, empirically substantiated for the United States but
scarcely for Latin America, have been explained by the combination of governmental responses to
environmental demands and the informational and political incentives of presidents to enhance control
over decision-making.
The composition of the US cabinet has gained complexity at the levels of structure and staff types. In
terms of structure, the cabinet evolved from three departments in 1789 (State, Treasury and War), to
nine by 1903 (adding Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Interior, Navy, and Justice), and 15 by 2002
(substituting Defense for War and Navy, and adding Education, Energy, Health, Homeland Security,
Housing, Transportation, and Veteran Affairs) (Campbell 2005: 254). The creation of new departments
was overwhelmingly due to Democratic presidents – who also created the largest number of inter-
departmental councils, boards, and task forces (Ragsdale and Theis 1997: 1292-1295) - although the last
two departments have been created during Republican administrations. Thus, the structure of the
cabinet has been taken to reflect both environmental pressures and ideological preferences for
increased governmental activity (ibid.). Based on the recent assignment of some policymaking
responsibilities to the vicepresidency, some authors also include this office as part of the cabinet
structure (Baumgartner and Evans 2009), although the actual participation of vicepresidents in decision-
making has experienced significant variations across and even within each presidency.
This evolution has increased the complexity of the cabinet as a set of organizations within the executive.
The reason for this, as scholars have noted, is that not all cabinet departments are created equal
(Rudalevige 2002: 93). Research has distinguished between inner and outer departments (Cronin 1975;
Cohen 1988): the former – i.e. State, Treasury, Defense, and Justice – tend to have broad and expanding
missions, work closer to presidents, and their performance is generally considered critical to the
assessment of any presidency; the latter – i.e. the remaining departments – usually have more
specialized missions, work closer to interest groups and constituencies than to presidents, and their
performance is only assessed as relevant contingent to the weight each president’s program gives each
policy area. Functional differentiation and political differentiation thus intersect in determining the
nature of the United States cabinet.
This combination of functional and political criteria in the development of the cabinet has also shaped
the types of staff that make up departmental leadership and ranks. On the one hand, inner and outer
cabinet members have been found to possess different profiles: while the former tend to be specialists
or personal confidants of presidents (Riddlesperger and King 1986), the latter are usually either party
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activists or individuals with backgrounds in related interest groups (Cohen 1988). On the other hand, the
politicization of cabinet departments has reached not only the chief executive officer level but also the
policy and support layers – to the point that “one has to bore down four levels below the secretary
before reaching strata populated almost entirely by career officials” (Campbell 2005: 258).
These patterns have been explained, just like the composition of the presidential center, as outcomes of
presidential attempts to cope with information asymmetries and enhance control over policymaking.
Information asymmetries arise from the inevitable fact of functional differentiation between the
presidency and the cabinet departments, and from the position of departments as agents with multiple
principals – namely the president, Congress, and interest groups. As Weingast (2005: 313) has
commented on the bureaucracy, cabinet departments are also “in the middle”: they are located under
presidential authority in the executive branch, but have been created and receive their funding and
mandates from Congress; they serve at the pleasure of the president to implement government policy,
but frame policy alternatives in such a way to preserve their own turf by pleasing related interest
groups. Consequently, presidents cannot ignore the perils of departmental capture by the particularistic
interests of bureaucrats and socioeconomic constituencies, nor can they risk letting cabinet secretaries
freely propose legislation to Congress – where they can collude with specialized committees also
potentially captured by particularistic interests (Light 1999: 223). The appointment of political allies and
confidants to cabinet positions and the politicization of increasingly deeper layers of departmental ranks
help presidents reduce information asymmetries and assert control over decision-making processes.
Presidential concerns with information asymmetries and control over policymaking thus also seem to
have affected the stability of cabinet members and the role of departments in decision-making. As for
stability, while only little over 50% of cabinet secretaries in the United States completed a full
presidential term or more between 1789 and 1989 (Nicholls 1991), this percentage rose significantly in
the 1990s (81.3% and 66.7% in each Clinton term) and 2000s (87.5% and 65.2% in each of G. W. Bush
terms) which would reflect the upside of politicizing the cabinet and controlling policymaking from the
presidency (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2010). However, the increasing use since the 1960s
of inter-departmental bodies as forums to develop and discuss policy alternatives has in effect limited
the ability of cabinet secretaries to influence decision-making (Hult 1993). Councils, task forces and
presidential commissions have effectively undermined the authority of cabinet secretaries by carving
departmental subunits for specific purposes, pitting them against presidential center and extra-
governmental advisers, and shifting their staff from one function to another within policymaking
processes (ibid; also Ponder 2000). Therefore, as scholars have consensually concluded, there is no such
thing as cabinet government in the United States.
Evidence in LAC
Research on presidential cabinets in Latin America has grown considerably in recent years – but this
growth has been uneven and accumulated knowledge is still incipient. Studies have focused mostly on
the composition and stability of cabinets. In contrast, little investigation exists on the relation between
presidents and cabinets, and on the participation of cabinet ministers in decision-making processes.
14
The composition of presidential cabinets has been studied on three dimensions: their partisan makeup;
the types of staff recruited; and their structure. The wealth of this research is concentrated on partisan
makeup. Scholars have established that coalitions are the most frequent form of cabinet composition in
Latin America. In comparative work on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador,
Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, Amorim Neto (2006) showed that 76% of cabinets
between 1978 and 2004 were either majority or minority coalition cabinets. Working on practically the
same list (merely replacing Panama with Paraguay), Martinez-Gallardo (2005, 2010a) showed that
coalition cabinets were in place 52% of the time between 1982 and 2003, while Chasquetti (2008) finds
coalition cabinets in 41% of all governments in the sample between 1978 and 2006. All cabinets in the
present democratic periods of Brazil and Chile have been coalition cabinets; in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru,
and Uruguay this has been the case between 80% and 91% of the time (ibid.). Majority coalition cabinets
have been more frequent in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay (Amorim Neto 2006) while single-party
majority cabinets are the least frequent form – prevalent only in Mexico (ibid.). These patterns have
been explained as the joint outcomes of the size of presidents’ legislative contingents, the number of
parties in the legislatures, and the formal lawmaking powers of presidents: coalition cabinets appear as
more frequent when presidents have minority status, face a large number of legislative parties, and
have strong lawmaking powers (Zelaznik 2001; Amorim Neto 2006; Martinez-Gallardo 2005, 2010a).
The types of staff recruited for cabinet positions have been studied on three dimensions: their
partisanship; their background; and their gender. On partisanship, Amorim Neto’s (2006) data showed
an average of 78.2% of partisan ministers, with peaks over 92% in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Mexico and Uruguay, and lows below 60% in Brasil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. The share of
partisan ministers appears to be correlated to the cabinet’s coalescence rate – i.e. the extent to which
the partisan makeup of the cabinet is consistent with the partisan distribution of seats in the legislature.
Again according to Amorim Neto (2006), average coalescence rates – which vary from 0 (no
coalescence) to 1 (perfect coalescence) – have been above 0.85 in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica
and Mexico, and below 0.60 in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. These patterns have been explained
as outcomes of the “presidential calculus” (ibid.): presidential decisions on the partisan makeup of
cabinets are contingent on the strength of executive lawmaking powers, the size of the president’s
legislative party, the president’s party discipline, the ideological position of the president vis-à-vis
legislators, the elapsed length of the term, and the economic conditions of the country. The share of
partisan ministers and the cabinet coalescence rate should be higher when presidents’ parties control
the legislative majority, are only beginning their terms in office, and enjoy strong lawmaking powers.
On the background of cabinet ministers, comparative work on Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica
and the United States (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2009, 2010) has shown that relevant
education or work experience, political insider experience, and known links to ministry clients are the
most important traits for ministerial recruitment. Relevant education or work experience oscillates
between 89.6% of ministers in the US and 75.3% in Colombia; political insider experience weighs the
most in Argentina (63.1% of ministers) and Costa Rica (58.1%) and the least in Chile (48.9%) and
Colombia (42%); while links to ministry clients are more important in the US (48.1%) and Argentina
15
(45.9%) and least in Chile (36.2%) (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2010: 31). Most ministers
have primary careers in government in Argentina (67.5%), Chile (68.1%) and the US (59.7%), while
primary careers in business are more relevant in Costa Rica (43.7%), and friendship with the president is
more relevant in Argentina (40%) than anywhere else (ibid). On gender, the same authors found the
highest shares of female ministers in Chile (35.1%) and Costa Rica (24.7%), and the lowest in the United
States (18.2%).
The structure of the cabinet is the least researched dimension on the composition of cabinets. The little
comparative data available (Martinez-Gallardo 2010a) shows significant variation in the number of
portfolios across countries – from nine in Paraguay 2008 to twenty-seven in Venezuela the same year.
Within-country variation has also been established as large for Bolivia (IDB 2006), less so for Brazil
(Inacio 2006) but not for Argentina (Molinelli et al. 1998). Twelve Latin American countries have a
ministerial position with cabinet coordination responsibility: in some countries it is defined
constitutionally (Argentina, Peru) or legally (Bolivia, Chile, Honduras, Venezuela); in others (Brazil,
Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico) it is located within the presidential center; and yet in others (Guatemala,
Nicaragua) it is assigned to the vicepresident. Complete data collection and explanation of these stylized
facts are still pending.
Cabinet stability has been investigated considering the duration of both cabinets and ministers. Cabinet
duration appears to be lower in Latin America than in the United States: Amorim Neto’s (2006) data
shows an average of 2.6 years for Latin American cabinets – compared to 4 years for US cabinets.
Cabinets survive longer than average in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela,
and less in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru (ibid). These patterns have been
explained as outcomes of the presidential party’s legislative status, the share of partisan ministers and
the cabinet’s partisan makeup: cabinets last longer if the president holds a legislative majority, there is a
high share of partisan ministers and a single-party makeup (Amorim Neto 2006).
Ministerial duration varies considerably across Latin American countries. Measured in months by
Martinez-Gallardo (2010c), ministers last an average 19.8 months, with Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica,
Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay above average, and Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and
Venezuela below average. Measured in years by Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson (2010), ministers
serve longer in the United States (3.6 years) than in Latin America (2.2 years). These patterns have been
explained as joint outcomes of the occurrence of economic or political shocks, the president’s
popularity, the electoral cycle, and the president’s reactive and proactive institutional powers (Martinez-
Gallardo 2010c); and as determined by the backgrounds of ministers (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-
Robinson 2010). Thus, ministers have been found to serve longer if inflation and political conflict are
low, economic growth, presidential popularity, and elections proximity arenhigh, and institutional
powers strong (Martinez-Gallardo 2010c); and if they are linked to ministry clients – whereas political,
education or work experience do not increase tenure (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2010).
There is practically no research on the relationship between presidents and cabinet ministers in Latin
America. There are some case studies of presidential administrations that contain accounts of conflicts
16
between presidents and finance ministers and/or between finance ministers and the rest of the cabinet
(Palermo and Novaro 1996; Corrales 2000, 2002; Altman 2000; Mayorga 2001; Novaro 2001; Lanzaro
2001), but no systematic dataset or account of presidential-ministerial interaction exists so far.
The role of the cabinet in decision-making processes is also understudied. Martinez-Gallardo (2010a:
121-122) claims that ministers have “a near-monopoly” in policy design, are charged with steering
presidential bills through Congress, and enjoy a central position in the implementation stage. Ministers
would dominate policy design due to the greater expertise at their disposal vis-à-vis legislators; they
would actively push executive bills through the legislative process by defending them in committees and
controlling amendments at both the committee and the floor stages; and they would lead
implementation by heading their own agencies and exercising their rulemaking capacity – which is both
inherent to their office and frequently aided by explicit congressional delegation (ibid.). However, no
empirical evidence has been hitherto provided on any of these claims.
Consequently, important research questions remain unanswered. What is the nature of the portfolios
included in Latin American cabinets? Under what conditions has each portfolio emerged or
disappeared? How is the cabinet organized: in functionally differentiated portfolios, in inter-
departmental councils, or both? How is authority distributed within cabinets: is it institutionally wielded
by a coordination portfolio, concentrated by the president, or informally assigned by the president to
one or more ministries? What are the formal and effective powers of ministers? In what ways are
cabinet departments involved in policymaking? How do ministers relate to the presidential center and
its staff? How do presidents manage relations between the presidential center and cabinet
departments? What is the structure of decision-making within the cabinet and within the ministries? In
what ways do presidents intervene in cabinet deliberations and internal ministerial decision processes?
To answer these questions, as in the case of the presidential center, two types of information would be
required and two different research strategies would be adequate for treating that information. On the
information side: a) legal and administrative instruments depicting the organization of cabinets and
ministries and its evolution through time, the formal powers of ministries and their subordinates, the
formal powers of presidents vis-à-vis ministers, and the scope of policy responsibilities of presidents,
cabinet departments, and the presidential center; b) quantitative and qualitative information on the
frequency and nature of interactions among presidents, ministers, and presidential center staff, forms of
involvement of ministries in decision-making processes, turnover rates, etc. On the research strategy
side: a) quantitative treatment of interactions between the aforementioned data and standard factors
used as independent variables in coalition research – such as legislative strength of the president’s
party, formal powers of the president, presidential popularity, length of presidential term, economic
context; b) social network analysis of interaction among presidents, ministers, and presidential staff.
Table 2 summarizes the findings of the US literature, the evidence available for Latin America, and the
research questions emerging from the knowledge gap.
17
Table 2 – State of the Art and Research Agenda on the Cabinet
Topic United States Latin America Research Agenda
Composition Evolution: functional and
political differentiation
Staff types: inner/outer
members and
politicization as attempts
to overcome information
asymmetries and enhance
control
Partisan makeup: majority
of coalition governments
Staff types: majority of
partisan ministers, but
contingent to
“presidential calculus”;
majority of political
insiders with government
careers
Structure: significant
cross-country variation in
number of portfolios;
generalized presence of
coordination ministry
Nature and evolution of
portfolios
Cabinet structure
Ministerial authority
Stability Increasing ministerial
stability
Increasing number of
para-ministerial
consultation bodies
Cabinet: lower duration
than in US; contingent to
legislative status of
presidential party, share
of partisan ministers, and
coalition makeup
Ministerial: significant
cross-country variation
contingent to shocks,
presidential popularity,
electoral cycle, and
president’s institutional
and partisan powers
Participation in Decision-
Making
Decreasing ministerial
participation
Increasing participation of
task forces and special
commissions
Relation to presidents:
case studies of president-
finance minister relations
Domination in policy
design and
implementation, but
empirically
unsubstantiated
Forms of staff
involvement
Relation to presidential
center
Presidential management
styles
18
2.3. Advisory Networks.
Presidential advisory networks are groups of individuals, organizational units and subunits linked to
presidents through the provision of advice for their decisions (Hult 1993: 113). The study of advisory
networks is premised on the idea that interaction among network members may affect “the nature and
timing of the advice a president receives, the president’s views on the credibility and importance of that
advice, and the impact of the advice on presidential decisions and decision outcomes” (ibid.). Research
on presidential advisory networks in the United States has focused on the composition of those
networks, their operation, and their effects on presidential decision-making.
The composition of advisory networks has been studied on two dimensions: the nature of their
members, and the stability of their membership. Approaches to network membership have been either
organizational or interactional. Organizational approaches have focused on the specific organizational
units and subunits involved in particular networks – stressing how their mandates, information, working
routines, and linkages to other actors such as Congress and interest groups shape the advice they
produce and their clout on presidential decisions. Stemming from Allison’s classic work on the Cuban
missile crisis (Allison 1972), this approach has been used primarily for the study of foreign policy
decision-making – particularly under crisis situations (Janis 1972; 1982; Kozak and Keagle 1988; Burke
and Greenstein 1989; Hart 1994; Hart, Stern and Sundelius 1997; Preston 2001). The main finding of
these studies is that the composition of networks involves crucial tradeoffs for presidents to maintain
control of decision-making. If networks are staffed solely with policy area specialists, presidents would
most likely received biased information designed to protect policy turfs and hide previous bad choices or
least-preferred alternatives of departments and bureaucrats. If networks are staffed with units of
various areas and different mandates information and advice would be more diverse, but two opposite
dynamics may complicate decision processes: either the pressure to produce decisions by consensus
building may lead to “groupthink” and its pathologies of information filtering, misrepresentation, and
denial of alternatives and potentially bad consequences or outcomes; or the competition between units
for dominance over decision outcomes may force the president to invest excessive time and energy in
the process (Rudalevige 2005: 340). Presidential choices for advisory network membership are thus
critical to networks’ influence on decision-making and outcomes.
Interactional approaches to network membership have defined individual advisers, rather than
organizations, as their units of analysis, and have categorized them according to their level of access to
the president. Based upon presidential schedules and diaries, scholars (Best 1988a, 1988b; Thompson
1992; Link 2002) have established the volume of interactions between presidents and advisers and, on
this basis, determined the existence of different adviser types according to the distance between their
formal positions in government and their effective positions in presidential advisory networks. Link’s
study of advisory networks in the Nixon and Carter administrations found three types of network
members: inner-core advisers, with extraordinary – i.e. one standard deviation greater than the mean –
access to the president’s time; outer-core advisers, with above average but less than standard deviation
access levels; and peripheral advisers, with below average levels of access (Link 2002: 251-252). This
categorization of advisers makes it possible to pinpoint the influence of particular individuals and
19
organizations – as represented by individuals – on presidential decisions by weighing in their frequency
of interactions with the president, the length of their paths to the president’s attention, and the precise
timing of their presence before the president for the presentation and discussion of specific information
or alternatives, and the making of concrete decisions.
The stability of network membership has also been studied from the organizational and the interactional
perspective. Organizational studies have concentrated on the survival of organizational units and on
variations in presidents’ use of those units within decision-making processes (Porter 1980; Burke and
Greenstein 1989; Ragsdale and Theis 1997), whereas interactional analyses have stressed the turnover
of each adviser type (Link 2002). Network stability has been explained from the organizational
perspective as the outcome of presidents’ managerial styles: turnover would be high under competitive
styles (Dickinson 1997) and less so under collegial styles – though staff shifting to different functions in
the policy process may also yield high turnover in these cases (Ponder 2000). From the interactional
perspective, turnover rates seem to be determined by overload: since presidents are forced to deal with
an increasingly higher number of problems throughout their term, their engagement in parallel
processing of issues forces them to limit the number of advisers they contact, and to seek only those
who can quickly provide information and solutions that are easy to understand and implement (Link
2002: 253). High turnover rates of network members may therefore be construed as indications of
greater adaptability of presidents to changing decision settings, or as signals of presidential difficulties in
handling complex environments and simultaneous challenges.
The operation of presidential advisory networks has been studied on three dimensions: decision
procedures; conflict among network members; and the effects of both on presidential decision-making.
Decision procedures have been found to change according to context and issue. Routine decision
contexts typically involve deliberation and decision-making by cabinet members and top-level
bureaucrats which presidents subsequently sanction; whereas extraordinary contexts such as crises or
unexpected events typically lead to direct presidential involvement – either through hierarchical
arrangements with heavy reliance on the presidential center, or adjudicative rules by which advisers
provide competing advice and presidents decide (Hult 1993; Walcott and Hult 1995). Foreign policy
issues are typically settled through competitive and collegial decision-making in which presidents
encourage adversarial deliberation among the agencies with specialization on the matter – National
Security Council, State Department, Defense Department, CIA, etc. In contrast, domestic policy issues,
particularly social policy, are generally discussed by inter-departmental councils and subjected to
multiple advocacy procedures (George 1972) whereby all concerned agencies and even outside parties
such as interest groups voice their position – typically with some cabinet secretary or top presidential
aide acting as an “honest broker” charged with laying down all the information and choices. These
variations have been explained as outcomes of the diverse incentives of network members. Presidents
must contend with various powerful actors in the course of governing, so they are chiefly motivated to
do so effectively and to bequeath a legacy that secures their place in history (Moe 1993). These
incentives lead presidents to maximize the chances to push their agenda through, and since
campaigning consumes most of their time and energies they typically have little in the way of ideas and
20
resources to develop policy agendas upon inauguration – so they must eventually rely on the
institutional sources available: cabinet departments, Congress, interest groups, think tanks (Light 1999:
83). This opens a window of opportunity for policy entrepreneurship by career bureaucrats and cabinet
secretaries, as well as for influential congressional leaders – all of whom compete for agenda setting and
program jockeying, especially on domestic issues (ibid.: 158).
Conflict within advisory networks has been studied as a consequence of members’ incentives, problem
overload, presidential inattention, and decision cycles. Presidential incentives to maximize control over
decision-making clash with bureaucratic turf protection, Congressional interest on credit-claiming for
politically promising issues, and departmental policy entrepreneurship (Volden 2002; Epstein et al.
2008). Problem overload may lead to inefficient information processing and biased deliberation (Light
1999), high network turnover rates (Link 2002), and ultimately inadequate choices. Presidential
inattention, either to specific issues or to tensions among network members, may lead to domination of
decision processes by powerful actors or agencies, decision gridlock, and “traffic jams” in policy
processing due to “underdirected participants” (Helmer 1981, quoted in Hult 1993). Finally, conflicts
within advisory networks tends to increase in the course of each term as presidents either become
focused on their reelection campaign or lose power as lame ducks (Light 1999).
Evidence in LAC
There is no comparable literature on presidential advisory networks in Latin America. A handful of
studies have analyzed the role of economists in policymaking process – particularly during the structural
reforms of the 1990s (Markoff and Montecinos 1993; Centeno and Silva 1998; the works recently
compiled in Montecinos and Markoff 2009) but mostly via case studies, without systematic datasets and
unrelated to network analytic perspectives. An even smaller literature on the diffusion of policy ideas
(Madrid 2003, 2005: Weyland 2007) has developed comparative analyses of the role of policy networks
in the spread of pension reforms throughout Latin America using network concepts, but these works
generally do not deal with the interaction between presidents and advisory networks.
There is therefore a considerable research agenda still pending. To what extent do presidents in Latin
America employ advisory networks? For what policy issues or areas do they employ those networks?
What is the composition of presidential advisory networks? How stable is this composition, and if
unstable, how does it vary? What explains the emergence, duration, and demise of advisory networks?
How are authority and power distributed among network members? How does decision-making operate
within advisory networks? How do presidents manage conflict among advisory network members? To
answer these questions, legal and administrative information is needed on the level of
institutionalization, formal powers, and evolution of presidential advisory networks and their members,
and quantitative information on the frequency and nature of interactions and conflicts among network
members is also required. The most adequate research strategy to treat this information would be social
network analysis, focused on describing the structure and evolution of presidential advisory networks,
the network structures and relational contents more conducive to conflict and cooperation, and the
managerial strategies with which presidents deal with those networks.
21
Table 3 summarizes the findings of the US literature, the evidence available for Latin America, and the
research questions emerging from the knowledge gap.
Table 3 – State of the Art and Research Agenda on Presidential Advisory Networks
Topic United States Latin America Research Agenda
Composition Member types: policy
specialists, political
advisers, or mix;
specialized area units or
diverse units;
inner/outer core
advisers and peripheral
advisers
Stability: lower under
competitive than
collegial styles;
contingent to overload
Case studies of
participation of
economists in
government
Composition
Stability
Emergence, duration,
demise
Staff turnover
Operation Decision procedures:
contingent to context
and issue area
Conflict: presidential
incentives to enhance
control clash with
bureaucratic turf
protection,
congressional credit-
claiming, and
departmental policy
entrepreneurship
Case studies of
participation of
economists in
government and
comparative studies on
diffusion of policy ideas
Decision procedures
Frequency of
employment
Issue areas
Presidential
management
Effects of Presidential
Decision-Making
Contingent to network
composition and
presidential managerial
styles
Comparison of
outcomes with work by
ministries and
presidential center
22
3. The Resources of the Presidency.
The study of the resources of the presidency is another topic to which the literature on the US
presidency has made significant contributions. These contributions are focused on specific
organizational resources: the president’s power to appoint officials to the bureaucracy; the presidency’s
capacity to supervise and clear the production of executive norms and legislative proposals prepared by
cabinet departments and bureaucratic agencies; and the presidency’s power to command and control
the budgetary process. Some of the latter research has been replicated for Latin America, supplemented
by studies on presidential control over intergovernmental transfers. The literature has accounted for
these presidential resources as tools that facilitate the politicization of the bureaucracy and the
centralization of decision-making processes in the presidency, and has generated important findings
about the conditions under which these resources are typically used. This section reviews the research
on each of these resources and highlights the questions pending for investigation in Latin American
countries.
3.1. Appointment Power.
In presidential systems of government the executive branch is typically endowed by the constitution or
other organic legislation with the power to appoint the staff of cabinet departments and other executive
agencies. Apart from certain positions that typically require legislative confirmation – such as cabinet
secretaries in the United States, or ambassadors, military commanders, and chief officers of important
executive agencies like central banks in most countries – presidents are free to exercise their
appointment power elsewhere in the bureaucracy. The presidential appointment power has therefore
been studied on two dimensions: its usages; and the determinants of those usages.
Studies on the usages of appointment power concur on the intensity with which presidents resort to it,
but differ on the rationale, the extent, and the effects of its use. On the rationale underpinning the use
of appointment powers, some scholars argue that presidents seek to increase the neutral competence
of the bureaucracy – i.e. the provision of unbiased information and independent advice on policy
choices (Heclo 1975; Light 1999) – while others contend that appointment powers are used to generate
a responsive bureaucracy – i.e. one politically aligned with presidents and ready to implement their
programs and follow their lead (Moe 1993; Moe and Wilson 1994). According to the latter, in their
search for responsiveness presidents use political appointees to either centralize policymaking in the
presidency or politicize the bureaucracy: centralization would be the consequence of appointees at
agency or departmental head levels deferring to presidential rather than departmental views;
politicization would be the consequence of neutralizing the clout of career bureaucrats by positioning
loyalists where information is produced and policy choices are framed (ibid.; also Dickinson 2002: 251).
These strategic rationales – centralization and politicization – can complement (Moe and Howell 1999)
or substitute each other contingent to the legacy of centralization and politicization each president
inherits: “if a function is satisfactorily centralized, politicizing its locus in the wider bureaucracy seems
23
like a waste of resources; likewise, if a bureau is sufficiently politicized, it should carry out presidential
preferences without the additional costs of centralizing the process” (Rudalevige 2009: 17).
The extent to which appointment powers may politicize or centralize the bureaucracy has been studied
both in terms of the growth of appointees and of the specific appointment techniques employed by
presidents. Some scholars have substantiated the politicization of the bureaucracy by pointing to the
overall growth of political appointees since the creation of the EOP (Pfiffner 1987; Maranto 1993; Light
1995; Durant and Warber 2001; Dickinson 2005): while employment in the federal bureaucracy may
have decreased, the tendency towards EOP staff growth has been consistent since the 1940s – and as
the EOP is the backbone of the presidential center, then EOP staff growth would signal an increase in
political appointees and therefore an increase in politicization of the bureaucracy. Others scholars have
shown that appointment techniques enable presidents to politicize not merely the managerial level, but
also the policy development, implementation and support levels of agencies (Campbell 2005; Lewis
2005, 2008): presidents can replace top managers, create layers of politically appointed managers with
authority over career managers, add appointed ministerial staff with no statutory authority but political
influence over career managers, reorganize agencies to diminish the power of career bureaucrats,
and/or impose reductions in the workforce which eliminate career posts and thus increase the power of
appointees (Lewis 2008: 32-39). The deeper the appointment techniques carve into the bureaucratic
structures, the greater the extent to which presidents may politicize those structures.
The effects of appointment powers have been studied on two dimensions: the centralization of decision-
making processes in the presidency, and their impact on the presidency’s ability to adapt to changing
situations. Appointments would centralize decision-making in the presidency not merely by increasing
the number of presidential loyalists within the bureaucracy but also by eliciting frequent turnover
among appointees – which “brings energy to the job and rewards more supporters” – and by fostering
confrontation between appointees and careerists – which presidents would deem necessary to “getting
things done” (Durant and Warber 2001: 227-228). But the very centralization of decision-making would
produce a “loss of political sensitivity” in the presidential center itself: the enlargement and functional
differentiation of the EOP and the occupation of critical information production and policy development
positions by presidential loyalists would displace departmental and bureaucratic information and advice,
and thus incline presidents to rely on the input of a loyal staff that lacks adequate knowledge to counsel
presidents on the consequences of policy decisions (Dickinson 2005: 160). Still, presidents might be able
to escape this tradeoff between increased control and decreased political sensitivity by imposing
functional differentiation among their appointees: some political appointments may seek only
patronage objectives – i.e. satisfying specific constituency demands and maintaining linkages with the
party and congressional leaders through which diverse information may flow towards the president –
while others may seek only policy objectives – i.e. guaranteeing that agencies align their operations with
the president’s ideological and policy agendas (Lewis 2008).
The determinants of the political usage of presidential appointments have been studied both from the
perspectives of the bargaining and the leadership paradigms of presidential politics. From the bargaining
paradigm’s perspective, appointment powers are used to politicize the bureaucracy when the
24
complexity of the president’s bargaining environment increases: when Congress passes legislation
creating agencies independent from the executive or empowering pre-existing agencies in such way as
to curtail presidential influence (Epstein and O’Halloran 1999; Epstein et al. 2008); or when societal
developments and/or interest group pressures increase expectations of presidential responsiveness
(Dickinson 2005). From the leadership paradigm’s perspective, presidents are more likely to use
appointments to politicize the bureaucracy when a) their policy views differ from those typical within a
given agency, b) agency competence is not (likely to be) affected by politicization, and c) their party
controls the majority of Congress (Lewis 2008: 59-61). Utilizing data on political appointments across all
levels of the bureaucracy, Lewis (2008) found that presidents increase the number of appointees when
party control of the presidency shifts, rather than in second-term presidencies or within-party
transitions; employ less political appointees or decrease their number in agencies that perform
technically complex tasks; and increase politicization when they enjoy unified government. These
patterns yield more or less constant growth in political appointments, as well as spikes in both policy
and patronage appointments in liberal-leaning agencies during conservative administrations and in
conservative-leaning agencies during liberal administrations (ibid: 139-140).
Evidence in LAC
There is no equivalent research on presidential appointment powers for Latin America. Consequently, a
wide agenda is open on this topic. The first item in this agenda is the identification of political
appointments: How can they be distinguished from career civil service appointments? What are the
procedures for their appointment and placement within government? The second item is their
measurement: What is the share of political appointees to civil servants within the executive branch? In
what capacities are political appointees incorporated to government: managerial, policy development,
or support? Where in the executive’s organizational structure are they located: the presidential center,
the cabinet departments, the executive agencies? Which policy jurisdictions are more likely to be staffed
with high shares of appointees? How do the shares, positions, and location of political appointees
change over time, both within and between presidencies? What are the backgrounds of appointees? Do
backgrounds change according to the position within government to which they are assigned: policy or
patronage? The third item in this research agenda would be the usages presidents make of appointees:
In what ways are appointees involved in decision-making processes: as policy directors, facilitators, or
monitors? What types of appointees, policy or patronage, are employed in what capacities within
policymaking processes? To answer these questions, legal and administrative information such as civil
service career rules and government employment data would be the main input, but qualitative and
quantitative information about the forms of involvement of appointees in decision making would also
be required. This information should be treated using the same strategies combined to study the
presidential center and presidential advisory networks. On the one hand, quantitative statistical analysis
to look for appointment patterns and their determinants – using the size of the president’s party,
divided government, presidential popularity, and the evolution of government functions and structure
as independent variables. On the other hand, social network analysis to establish the usages of
appointees by determining their role in advisory networks and concrete decision-making processes.
25
3.2. Clearance Power.
In presidential as in parliamentary systems of government, the bulk of the executive’s policymaking
activity is not produced by the chief executive but by the cabinet departments or other executive
agencies. In presidential systems, to coordinate the production process of legislative proposals, decrees,
executive orders, and regulatory directives by those departments and agencies, chief executives
typically reserve for themselves the power to review these products and decide which would be sent to
Congress or implemented by the executive, and which would be discarded or reworked within the
executive branch. This is the clearance power.
Studies of this presidential resource in the United States have focused on its scope, its rationale, and its
effectiveness. Clearance power was first established as budgetary clearance in the 1920s, but later
evolved to encompass legislative clearance in the 1930s (Neustadt 1954) and regulatory review in the
1980s (West 2006). Budgetary and legislative clearance operate both before and after legislative
proposals are dealt with in Congress: before, by evaluating whether the draft legislation and budget
items proposed by cabinet departments and executive agencies are “consistent with” or “in accordance
with” the president’s campaign commitments and stated legislative goals (Light 1999: 4-5); after, by
assessing whether legislation approved by Congress is in tune with the president’s program or deserves
a presidential veto (Neustadt 1954: 641). Regulatory review – also labeled administrative clearance –
performs the same exercise on drafts for executive orders, regulatory agency directives, and presidential
proclamations – only it adds cost-benefit analysis to the political criteria employed for legislative
clearance (West 2006: 441). Clearance power has always been located in the Executive Office of the
President: in the Bureau of the Budget until 1972, and currently in its successor agency, the Office for
Management and Budget (OMB), where the Office of Legislative Reference takes up legislative clearance
and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) deals with administrative clearance.
The rationale of the clearance power has been to centralize control of decision-making in the
presidency. Clearance criteria and procedures are “managerial rules that constrain agency behavior”
(Moe 1993: 371) by blocking cabinet departments and other agencies from independently advancing
their own agendas in collaboration with congressional committees, and by imposing a political line upon
executive units. Thus clearance power enables presidents to maintain administrative, policy and political
consistency within their own branch: clearance criteria allow the presidential center to control the policy
and political content of executive output, and clearance procedures centralize the information flow and
decision-making processes in order to secure content control (Moe and Wilson 1994; Kagan 2001).
The effects of clearance power have been characterized differently according to the type of clearance.
Legislative clearance has been deemed as effective for mediating and arbitrating conflict among
departments and agencies over policy orientations and responsibilities (Neustadt 1954; Gilmour 1971),
as well as for providing presidents with an institutional memory of executive policymaking – and hence
with ideas and lessons for presidential decision processes (Light 1999: 231). Its effectiveness for
26
centralizing control over policy content and maximizing political alignment seems to have been more
ambiguous: centralization of legislative formulation within the executive by the presidential center,
measured as the percentage of legislative proposals led by the EOP or the president’s office, has been
more or less constant since the late 1940s, but by no means dominant in executive policymaking
(Rudalevige 2002: 82-84). Administrative clearance has also been assessed as effective for resolving
conflicts among agencies and programs (West 2006: 435), as well as for “delaying, stopping, modifying,
or promoting particular regulations” (Durant and Resh 2009: 584). However, its efficacy for top-down
planning or consistency among policy areas and programs has been labeled as meager (ibid; West 2006:
448). All in all, then, the centralizing aims of clearance power appear to have been fulfilled more in their
procedural than in their substantial dimension.
Evidence in LAC
There is no research available on the clearance power of the presidency in Latin America. Consequently,
the space is open for investigation on all its dimensions. What Latin American executives have clearance
power? Where within the executive branch is this power located: in the presidential center or in specific
cabinet ministries – such as finance or coordination? What is the scope of clearance power: is it
restricted to legislative/administrative clearance, or does it encompass both? What are the specific
capacities involved in legislative clearance power: review of departmental legislative proposals, decree
drafts and enacted legislation to prepare for vetoes, or interpretation of the meaning and scope of
enacted legislation as well? What have the conditions for the emergence of clearance power been?
What are the effects of clearance power upon decision-making processes? To answer these questions,
legal and administrative information on clearance power is needed: specifically on its scope, location,
capacities, and procedures. Quantitative and qualitative data on the uses of clearance power would also
be required: specifically on the nature and frequency of changes introduced on legislative proposals,
decree drafts, enacted legislation, and regulatory directives; the policy areas and issues on which
clearance power is dominantly exercised; the political conditions under which the exercise of clearance
power varies in frequency, scope, and issues. Statistical treatment of this information would be an
adequate research strategy: using the nature, uses and outcomes of clearance power as dependent
variables, and standard variables utilized in the analysis of budgetary politics – size of the president’s
legislative contingent, divided government, partisan distribution of cabinet ministries, economic context
– as independent variables.
3.3. Budgetary Power.
Presidential budgetary power in the US seems to be the reverse of presidential budgetary power in most
of Latin America. While in the United States the president has no complete control over any stage of the
budgetary process, most Latin American presidents dominate the formulation, implementation, and
control of the budget, and exert significant influence on its approval by Congress. The budgetary powers
27
of Latin American presidents have been thoroughly described in both their nature and effects, although
the use of specific budgetary procedures remains to be investigated.
The US president’s budgetary power is unequivocally low in both absolute and comparative terms. In
absolute terms, the president is not a dominant actor at any stage of the budgetary process. Only in the
formulation stage does the presidency exert some control over matters, albeit not dominance: the
cabinet departments and executive agencies take the lead in proposing their own budgets, typically in
close contact with the relevant congressional committees before which they will ultimately defend
them, but the president is empowered to modify those preliminary proposals via the OMB, and thus to
shape the budget bill eventually sent to Congress (Stewart 1989; Schick 2007). In the approval stage, the
president has no formal power: presidents may informally bargain with congressional leaders
(Beckmann 2010), but their leverage in those negotiations is little insofar as Congress may unilaterally
reject the president’s bill and amend its provisions almost at will (Howell 2003). In the implementation
stage, bureaucrats – i.e. department and agency heads – have the leading role, typically shielded from
presidential influence by direct congressional delegations of power and protected by the congressional
committees with jurisdiction over each agency (Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991; Epstein and O’Halloran
1999), although presidents may impound – i.e. decide not to spend – funds and have sometimes
attempted to reinstate their own budget priorities through executive orders (Cooper 2002). In the
control stage, presidents may exert some influence through OMB’s regulatory directives, but the main
actors are the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office (Schick 2007).
Evidence in LAC
Among Latin American presidents, only the president of Guatemala has as weak a budgetary power as
the US president. In the formulation stage, all presidents except for those of Guatemala and Peru can
limit the expenditures of line ministries; everywhere except Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama,
Peru and Venezuela, either the president or the finance minister has ultimate authority over the
executive’s budget proposal; and everywhere except Bolivia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nicaragua the
budget’s content is constrained by numerical rules such as expenditure, deficit, or debt limits (Filc and
Scartascini 2007: 165, 170). In the approval stage, all congresses except those of Bolivia and Guatemala
are restricted in their capacity to modify the executive’s budget proposal (ibid: 169); in all countries
except Brazil, Honduras and Mexico the executive has a fallback outcome in case of congressional
deadlock that increases its budgetary power vis-à-vis Congress – such as execution of an actualized
version of the previous budget in Argentina, Guatemala, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Uruguay and Venezuela; or the tacit approval of the executive’s budget bill in Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama and Peru (Payne et al. 2003). In the implementation stage, the executive is
authorized to withhold the execution of budgetary funds in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the
Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Uruguay – or to do so
when legal obligations to spend have already been contracted in El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay and
Venezuela (Filc and Scartascini 2007: 171); presidents can modify the allocation of funds approved by
Congress with the sole restriction of not altering the budgetary outcome in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay,
and Peru – or do so abiding by constitutional restrictions in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela (Abuelafia
28
et al. 2009; Alston et al. 2009; Cardenas et al. 2009; Mejia Acosta et al. 2009; Molinas et al. 2009;
Carranza et al. 2009; Moraes et al. 2009; Puente et al. 2009). In the control stage, presidents may
dominate congressional oversight activities contingent to their partisan power over the legislature,
which typically determines their ability to appoint members of oversight agencies, shape the oversight
agenda, and control the imposition of penalties for budgetary deviations (Bonvecchi 2008, 2009).
The effects of presidential budgetary power in the US and Latin America have proven to be contrasting.
While in the United States the budgetary process has been characterized by recurrent conflict between
the president and Congress and recurrent swings between surplus and deficit outcomes (Schick 2007), in
Latin America the trends seem to be the reverse: more hierarchical budgetary processes marked by
strong presidential power tend to produce budget surpluses (Filc and Scartascini 2007: 174). In addition,
many works have shown the utility of budgetary power for coalition building and maintenance
throughout the region (Pereira and Mueller 2002; Amorim Neto and Borsani 2004; Hallerberg and
Marier 2004; Amorim Neto 2006; Rodriguez and Bonvecchi 2006).
Still, some topics on the nature and use of presidential budgetary powers are still to be researched.
Where within the executive branch are budgetary powers located: in the Finance Ministry, in the
Coordination Ministry, or in the president’s hands? How exactly have budgetary powers been used in
legislative coalition-building: have they been employed to build support for any and all legislation, or
only for specific pieces? What budgetary powers have been more utilized by presidents – the negative
powers of withholding or impounding funds, or the positive powers of augmenting and allocating funds?
Under what conditions have positive and negative budgetary powers been more used? To answer these
questions, administrative information on the location of budgetary powers and the patterns of use of
specific budgetary powers and allocation of budgetary funds would be required. This information should
be treated using the standard quantitative analyses previously employed to study budgetary politics.
3.4. Intergovernmental Transfers.
Intergovernmental transfers are not a presidential resource in the United States but they typically
operate as such in many Latin American countries. The reasons behind this fundamental difference are
rooted in the economic structure, the party system, and the balance of power among government
branches. Unlike Latin American countries, the United States combines three traits that shape its
transfer system into a congress-centered one: an uneven regional distribution of income that
strengthens local governments and socioeconomic groups who press for a decentralized tax system with
automatic intergovernmental transfers (Boix 2003; Beramendi 2005; Wibbels 2005); a decentralized
party system that locks in such fiscal arrangements by setting a premium on the control of local over
national office and thus discouraging career paths in the national executive (Diaz-Cayeros 2006); and a
constitutional system of checks and balances that creates separate institutions sharing powers (Jones
1994) while simultaneously granting the legislature exclusive rights over the power of the purse. Under
such conditions, intergovernmental transfers are not controlled by the president but established and
29
governed by Congress; presidents may propose regional redistribution through their budget bills, but
legislators typically allocate budgetary funds with universalistic criteria in order to maintain cooperation
within the legislature (Shepsle et al. 1981; Weingast and Marshall 1988); and the literature on
intergovernmental transfers thus focuses on pork-barreling (Weingast and Shepsle 1981; Cain et al.
1984; Ferejohn and Krehbiel 1987; Evans 1994) or party-based models of transfer allocation (Cox and
McCubbins 1986; Dixit and Londregan 1996). In contrast, Latin American party systems tend to be more
centralized than the US system (Jones and Mainwaring 2003; Jones 2010), and the balance of power
among government branches tends to favor the executive (Garcia Montero 2009) – particularly in the
budgetary process. Under such conditions, given a sometimes even more uneven regional distribution of
income, intergovernmental transfers are typically in the president’s domain, and while legislatures may
be able to constrain the executive’s ability to reallocate funds among regions, presidents have power to
shape that allocation.
Evidence in LAC
Presidential power over intergovernmental transfers has been studied along two dimensions: their use
for payment of electoral and/or governing coalitions; and their institutional use-value. Research on
transfers as resources for coalition-building and maintenance has found evidence of such use in
Argentina (Remmer and Wibbels 2000; Gibson and Calvo 2001; Jones 2001; Tommasi et al. 2001;
Remmer and Gelineau 2003; Bonvecchi and Lodola 2010), Brazil (Ames 2001; Pereira and Mueller 2002;
Arretche and Rodden 2004), Colombia (Crisp and Ingall 2002), Mexico (Flamand 2006; Magaloni et al.
2007), and Peru (Schady 2000). The findings in this literature suggest that transfer allocations vary with
the most relevant factors in each political system: overrepresentation of poor districts and local
electoral contests in Argentina, regional clout and legislative party size in Brazil, territorial distribution of
partisan support in Colombia and Peru, and territorial distribution of poverty and partisan support in
Mexico.
Research on the institutional use-value of transfers, although more scarce, has shown that the political
value of intergovernmental transfers for presidents depends on the level of discretionality they afford
them. Bonvecchi and Lodola (2010: 8) argue that presidents “prefer to manage transfers discretionally
rather than centralizing tax revenues due to the comparatively higher coalition-building potential of
discretionary funds relative to both formulaic and equalization transfers”, and propose a taxonomy of
intergovernmental transfers based upon their level of discretionality as measured on five dimensions
that presidents may control: amount, timing, targeting, payment, and earmarking. Using their taxonomy
to re-specify previous studies on transfer allocations in Argentina, these authors show that, unlike in
extant analyses (Remmer and Gelineau 2003), intergovernmental transfers with high level of
presidential discretionality only boost the electoral chances of presidential co-partisans in provincial
legislative elections – whereas only non-discretionary grants tend to favor co-partisans in national and
gubernatorial elections (Bonvecchi and Lodola 2010: 20-22). These findings suggest that presidents may
use different transfers for different political purposes.
30
However, a lot remains to be investigated on intergovernmental transfers as presidential resources.
What are the levels of discretionality of intergovernmental transfers in the rest of Latin American
countries? How do presidents use transfers of different levels of discretionality? In what ways, if any,
does the use of different transfer types varies with electoral or legislative coalition-building purposes?
Where within the executive branch is the power over transfer distribution located? Under what
conditions are intergovernmental transfers effective to entice legislative and/or electoral support for
incumbent presidents? To answer these questions, legal and administrative information on
intergovernmental transfers is required: legislation to learn the level of discretionality of each transfer
for both presidents and subnational recipients; administrative data on the timing and recipients of
transfer distribution, as well as on the institutional format – laws, decrees, administrative decisions –
employed to effect transfer distribution. This information should be treated with the standard statistical
techniques used to study the determinants of transfer distribution: taking allocation patterns as
dependent variables, and transfer types, electoral outcomes, distribution of legislative seats and policy
issues as independent variables.
Table 4 summarizes the findings of the US literature on the resources of the presidency, the evidence
available for Latin America, and the research questions emerging from the knowledge gap.
Table 4 – State of the Art and Research Agenda on the Resources of the Presidency
Resource United States Latin America Research Agenda
Appointment Power Use: intense; to increase
neutral competence or
responsiveness of
bureaucracy; to centralize
decision-making or
politicize bureaucracy
Effects: tradeoff between
control and political
sensitivity
Determinants:
environmental
complexity, preference
misalignment, technical
feasibility, unified
government
Identification of political
appointees and
appointment procedures
Measurement of
appointees’ presence,
location, capacities, and
backgrounds
Participation of
appointees in decision-
making
Cross-country, cross-
presidency and within-
presidency variation
31
Clearance Power Scope: budgetary,
legislative, and
administrative
Rationale: centralization
of decision-making
through criteria and
procedures
Effects: centralization in
procedures but not in
policy substance
Existence, location, scope,
capacities, and effects of
clearance power
Cross-country, cross-
presidency and within-
presidency variation
Budgetary Power Not dominant at any stage
Somewhat strong in
formulation, weaker in
approval, slightly stronger
in implementation,
weaker in control
Effects: recurrent conflict
with Congress and swings
between deficit and
surplus
Stronger than US in all
stages throughout the
region – except
Guatemala
Cross-country variations
contingent to legislation
and partisan power
Effects: increasingly
hierarchical processes and
budget surpluses
Location within executive
branch
Uses in legislative and
electoral coalition building
Intergovernmental
Transfers
Congress-centered
transfer system due to
uneven regional income
distribution, decentralized
party system and strong
checks and balances
Transfers distributed by
legislators to maintain
legislative cooperation
Presidency-centered
transfer system with
varying levels of
presidential discretionality
over transfers
Transfers distributed by
presidents for coalition
building
Level of discretionality of
transfers across countries
Uses of different
discretionary transfers for
legislative or electoral
coalition building
4. The Impact of Executive Organization and Resources on Policymaking
The study of the effects of the executive branch organization and the resources of the presidency on
policymaking is the least developed topic in both the US and the Latin American literature on
presidential politics. In the United States, research has focused primarily on the effects of presidential
advisory networks on foreign policymaking, and only secondarily on the consequences of presidential
center organization, cabinet structure, and presidency resources on domestic policymaking, government
strategies, and public policy outcomes. In Latin America, research is particularly scarce, and the little
32
work available is concentrated on the role of executive organization in government formation and
survival, or on the general impact of executive organization variables on the nature of policymaking
processes and policy outcomes. This section reviews the relevant literature with emphasis on its three
most recurrent topics: governing strategy choices, policymaking processes, and public policy outcomes.
4.1. Governing Strategy Choices.
The impact of executive organization and presidency resources on the governing strategy choices of
presidents has been investigated on two dimensions: the choice between unilateral and legislative
governing strategies, and the choice of political moves within each governing strategy. The treatment of
the executive’s organization and resources varies in both topics: they are sometimes treated as
independent variables, and other times as intervening variables.
The literature on strategy choices differs on the nature of the choices and on the rationale underpinning
choice. The distinction between a unilateral and a legislative governing strategy appears to be
determined by either the type of resources dominantly employed by presidents or the conditions under
which strategy choices must be made. Scholars of the former persuasion argue that the use of unilateral
institutional tools – such as executive orders, proclamations, regulatory directives, vetoes or decrees –
rather than reliance on congressional bills and ordinary legislative processes (Mayer 2001; Cooper 2002;
Howell 2003; Amorim Neto 2006; Howell and Kriner 2008), or the appointment of non-partisan rather
than partisan cabinets (Amorim Neto 2006), indicate that presidents have chosen a unilateral governing
strategy. Scholars of the latter persuasion contend there is no clear demarcation line between unilateral
and legislative strategies: while it is certainly true that presidents sometimes act on their own against
what the majority of Congress wants, it is also oftentimes the case that presidents act alone executing
the will of Congress, effectively making use of shared powers stemming from congressional delegation
of authority (Bailey and Rottinghaus 2010: 2-3). Moreover, according to these scholars the use of
unilateral tools may involve reliance not only on previous bargains with Congress, but also on bargains
within the executive itself – so much so that the difference between unilateral and legislative strategies
may not actually signify “a shift between a ‘unilateral’ and a ‘multilateral’ process”, but “a change in
where, and with whom, bargaining takes place” (Dickinson 2008: 296). Consequently, strategy choices
would depend on the bargaining conditions: presidents would generally prefer a unilateral strategy that
maximizes their discretion (Moe 1993; Moe and Wilson 1994), but the purely unilateral strategy of
discretion maximization would only obtain under unified government and perfect alignment of
preferences among president, legislators, and bureaucrats (Epstein and O’Halloran 2000: 313-314). Any
other situation would require legislative governing strategies – either direct bargaining with Congress
for policies and authority, or indirect bargaining through the bureaucracy intimately connected to the
relevant congressional committees (ibid.).
Research on the rationale for choosing a governing strategy observes some presidential resources as
independent variables and others as intervening variables. Unilateral institutional tools and the
33
organizational capacities of the presidential center are typically conceived of as independent variables:
their availability would induce presidents, ceteris paribus, to adopt a unilateral strategy (Moe 1993;
Amorim Neto 2006). In contrast, the composition of cabinets and the operational structure of advisory
networks are typically treated as intervening variables: non-partisan cabinets and hierarchical advisory
networks would be more suitable for implementing unilateral governing strategies because they
enhance presidential control over decision-making, whereas partisan cabinets and collegial advisory
networks would be more fitting for legislative strategies insofar as they maximize openness and
consultation in decision-making processes (ibid; Walcott and Hult 1995). However, executive
organization and presidency resources are never conceptualized as the sole determinants of governing
strategy choices. For some scholars, these choices also depend on the distribution of preferences in the
legislature and the courts, which determine the likelihood of repeal of presidential unilateral actions
(Howell 2003); for others, governing strategies are also chosen with an eye on economic conditions, the
time left on the presidential term, the number of parties in the legislature, and the size of the
president’s legislative contingent (Amorim Neto 2006).
The literature on the political moves within each governing strategy, while consistently treating
executive organization and presidency resources as independent variables, differs on the nature of their
consequences for the implementation of each strategy. Research on unilateral strategies stresses the
fragility of unilateral tools and the collective action problems within the executive branch that may
weaken their efficacy. Decisions made by unilateral fiat may be overturned by unilateral fiat, which
strengthens the power of individual presidents but weakens the power of the presidency to set a stable
status quo (Howell and Kriner 2008: 137) – unless the status quo itself becomes stable due to the
distribution of preferences in Congress and the courts (Howell and Mayer 2005). The implementation of
unilateral strategies is typically more complicated the more organizationally complex is the presidential
center: high internal differentiation of the presidential center increases transaction costs by increasing
coordination problems between the president and loyal appointees who, combining political alignment
with informational asymmetries, “accrue power independent of the president” (Krause 2009: 77).
Research on legislative governing strategies underscores a series of tradeoffs between resources and
conditions for their effectiveness which yield cycles of presidential efficacy. Presidents typically have
more resources to design their program, set the legislative agenda, and influence outcomes at the
beginning of their terms – i.e. when they possess more political capital, have more time and energy to
attend to multiple fronts; but at the same time they have little expertise on how to articulate their
program, devise the legislative agenda, and lobby the right congressional leaders and committees to get
it passed (Light 1999: 18-19, 23, 33). Presidents generally acquire the required expertise with time, but
as midterm and presidential elections go by they have less political capital to employ that expertise
effectively – either because their party looses seats in the midterms or they become lame ducks after
reelection (ibid.). These tradeoffs generate two cycles that constrain presidential legislative strategies:
the cycle of decreasing influence, marked by the depletion of political capital; and the cycle of increasing
effectiveness, marked by learning about how best to staff the executive organization and use the
presidency’s resources (ibid: 36-39).
34
Evidence in LAC
The investigation of governing strategies in Latin America has been circumscribed to the choice between
unilateral and legislative strategies. The works previously cited by Zelaznik (2001) and Amorim Neto
(2006) have shown that the condition for unilateral strategies to be effective is that unilateral
presidential resources be combined with enough partisan resources to withstand legislative repeals of
unilateral decisions. In contrast, Pereira et al.’s (2005) piece on the use of decrees by Brazilian
presidents argues that presidential popularity and economic conditions are the main explanatory
variables of the use of unilateral governing strategies. Still, there is little research available on the
political moves within each governing strategy. How does the organization of the executive branch
affect the implementation of unilateral and legislative strategies? In what ways does staff in the
presidential center, cabinet ministers, and advisory networks intervene in the processes of shaping
unilateral and legislative moves? Which types of presidency resources are most employed in those
moves? To what extent do Latin American presidents experience the cycles of decreasing influence and
increasing effectiveness that seem to characterize US presidential politics? To answer these questions,
the paper trail behind legislative proposals, decrees, and other presidential directives must be
reconstructed, so that the nature and frequency of each staff type’s involvement can be assessed. The
forms and frequency of staff involvement should be treated as dependent variables, and the staff types,
presidency resources, and standard political and economic environmental factors should be used as
independent variables in statistical analyses.
4.2. Policymaking Processes.
The impact of executive organization and presidency resources on policymaking processes has been
investigated on three dimensions: the type of policy aims and objectives; the source of policy ideas; and
the structure of policymaking processes. The literature on the US presidency has made substantial
contributions on all topics; the literature on Latin American presidencies has focused on the latter.
The type of policy aims that presidents pursue seem to be determined by the informational and political
resources at their disposal. As for informational resources, presidents with highly skilled advisors, highly
institutionalized bureaucracies and/or highly efficient clearance agencies would typically pursue
marginal or incremental policy objectives in technical or non-controversial areas (Larocca 2006: 17). The
rationale for this pattern is that those informational resources work on the basis of institutional
memories and standard operating procedures, and therefore aim primarily at reproducing or amplifying
the power of their own turf; consequently, presidents predominantly advised by such organizations are
discouraged from pursuing new policies or setting bold aims for themselves. In contrast, presidents
would pursue innovative policies only in policy arenas where some “exogenous shock” has destabilized
the status quo (Miller 1993: 303; Beckmann 2010: 36). In such conditions, the ordinary advice is
rendered unusable because departments and agencies typically lack capacities and incentives for
adaptation, so as disorientation peaks presidents can afford to be selectively unresponsive to
35
departmental and interest-group pressures (Moe 1993: 364). As for political resources, presidents with
more centralized control over policy formulation and more (cohesive) congressional support would
generally embark in new, large-scale programs, whereas presidents with less control over policy
formulation and less (cohesive) congressional support would most likely take up marginal improvements
in old programs or small new initiatives (Light 1999: 110; Rudalevige 2002).
The sources of policy ideas have been found to vary with the transaction costs of information and
advice. Presidents must decide whether to “make or buy” information and policy ideas in the
presidential center or at the cabinet departments by pondering the relative scope and quality of the
product from each source against the challenges of maintaining control over policymaking (Rudalevige
2002). Departments and other expert agencies would typically contribute “expert substantive
knowledge usually unmatched in the White House staff” but little or no political sensibility, whereas
presidential staffers would typically offer “political expertise and a single-minded devotion to the
president’s interest” but no technical advice (ibid: 11). So ideas will be drawn from the presidential
center when political dynamics demand quick responses and novel approaches, issues cut across
departmental jurisdictions, and/or the matters at hand do not require technically sophisticated
responses: under these conditions the benefits of maintaining control over policymaking outweigh the
costs of lacking expert information or advice (ibid: 12). In contrast, ideas would be drawn from cabinet
departments or independent agencies when issues are highly complex, presidential and bureaucratic
preferences are aligned either substantively or through control of departments by political appointees,
or the president’s party has the legislative majority: in those conditions control over policymaking is of
little concern because it is more likely guaranteed (ibid: 39; also Light 1999: 87-89).
The structure of the policy process has been found to change with the level of institutionalization of the
presidency, the nature of presidential staff arrangements, and their associated informational costs.
Some scholars argue that the institutionalization of the presidency has increased a) centralization of
control over policymaking by the White House staff, b) centralization of such control in key aids within
that staff, and c) the emergence within the presidential center of behaviors and routines typical of highly
institutionalized organizations: turf wars, information withholding and manipulation, etc. (Burke 2000:
35). Less institutionalized presidencies, in contrast, would be characterized by more decentralized policy
processes led by cabinet members or agency heads, less political control by the presidential staff, and
bureaucratic routines that place leadership of policy processes in the cabinet departments and line
agencies rather than the presidential center (Durant and Resh 2009). Other scholars contend that the
institutionalization of the presidency has generated coordination problems within the presidential staff
that hinder both the centralization of policymaking processes and their control by the president (Krause
2004, 2009). In highly institutionalized presidential centers, presidents face a tradeoff between staff
loyalty and staff discretion: loyalty helps presidents maximize control, but discretionary power in the
hands of staffers may conspire against centralization of policymaking (Krause 2009: 83). Presidents may
escape this tradeoff by maximizing staff loyalty and minimizing staff discretion, but only to encounter
another tradeoff: that between control and information – in which maximizing control over
36
policymaking may come at the expense of minimizing the chances for alternative information and advice
to flow towards the president’s desk (Neustadt 1990).
Hierarchical staff structures typically help presidents centralize policymaking processes, but
simultaneously discourage the consideration of alternative ideas and information, and make adaptability
to changing decision settings more difficult – so they would generally be more useful when presidential
agendas involve “policies that require consistency, standardization, and reliability” (Durant and Warber
2001: 229). In contrast, collegial staff structures yield decentralized policy processes in which diverse
information and ideas are pondered, but simultaneously prevent top-down control of decision-making,
and still make adaptability difficult (Hult 2000: 40; Walcott and Hult 1995). Competitive staff structures,
in turn, seem to combine the best of both worlds: they maximize the flow of information and advice by
encouraging competition and overlapping among aids; they maximize centralization and control of
policymaking by placing presidents as ultimate deciders; and by combining maximum diversity in
information and advice with maximum decision-making authority they also maximize adaptability to
changing settings (Dickinson 1997: 224, 228). There is, however, the risk that competitive staff
structures might turn into multiple advocacy arrangements – in which diversity of information and
advice are also maximized (George 1972) but the president’s authority to settle disputes is weakened by
legitimizing the voice of all advocates. Staff shift may counter this risk by combining hierarchy – which
preserves presidential authority – with flexible assignments and collegial consultation – which preserve
diversity of information and advice (Ponder 2000: 193). The problem is presidents are typically not free
to choose their staff structures but forced to shape them under the constraints inherent to agenda-
setting in a system of separated institutions sharing powers: the cycle of decreasing influence
encourages the adoption of hierarchical structures in order to maximize control and centralization of
policymaking at the zenith of the president’s agenda-setting power – i.e. the first year in office – but the
cycle of increasing effectiveness encourages the adoption of collegial staff structures to compensate for
the lack of expertise and ideas with which presidents generally enter office (Light 1999: 60). The
countervailing incentives of these cycles would suggest that competitive or staff shift arrangements are
more suitable, but no comparative research is available to settle the argument.
The informational costs associated with reliance on centralized or decentralized staff structures incite
presidents to make centralization a contingent rather than a permanent policymaking arrangement. The
rationale for contingent centralization stems from the aggregate nature of presidential agendas: since
the president’s program is “an aggregation of individual proposals” (Rudalevige 2002: 29) intended to
deal with the country’s problems as each president perceives them and as they come to demand
presidential responses, then presidents should assign the locus and leadership of policy formulation to
either cabinet departments, the presidential center or both, according to the type of advice required by
each policy issue and decision situation (ibid: 26). Thus, a centralized policy process would be preferable
when conditions require political rather than technical information and advice – such as crises that
demand urgent responses, cross-cutting issues or technically simple matters; whereas a decentralized
policy process would be preferable when conditions require technical rather than political information
37
and advice – such as technically complex issues or a decision setting marked by preference alignment
among presidents, legislators, and bureaucrats (ibid: 39).
Evidence in LAC
Research on the effects of executive organization and presidency resources on policymaking processes
in Latin America has focused on the structure of those processes. Both IDB (2006: 149) and Martinez-
Gallardo (2010a: 138-142) have found that cabinet stability is correlated to policy processes with high
coordination, coherence, adaptability to changing environments, and stability of structural
arrangements. In addition, Martinez-Gallardo (2010b: 27) has shown that the composition of cabinets is
generally designed to boost presidential control of decision-making by adapting it to shocks – such as
elections, crises, etc. – that alter the relative costs of unilateral or legislative governing strategies.
However, no research exists either on the types of policy aims or the sources of policy ideas – nor on the
factors underpinning variations in policymaking structures. What are the policy aims that Latin American
presidents typically set themselves? Where do policy ideas come from? How do different staff
arrangements, cabinet compositions, and advisory network memberships impact the policy aims and
ideas that presidential administrations set? What accounts for variations in the ways policymaking
processes are structured: issue areas, organizational structures, or political and economic environmental
conditions? To answer these questions, certain administrative information apart from that on
presidential centers, cabinets and advisory networks would have to be collected: presidential messages
to Congress and the general public to identify policy aims; paper trail on the production of legislative
proposals, decrees and other presidential directives to identify the sources of policy ideas, the types of
staff involved, forms of staff involvement in decision-making and their frequency. A combination of
statistical analyses and case studies should be devised in which executive branch organizational
arrangements should be treated as independent variables, and types of ideas, sources of ideas, and
forms of staff involvement in decision-making should be treated as dependent variables.
4.3. Public Policy Outcomes.
The impact of executive organization and presidency resources on public policy outcomes is the least
studied topic in the presidency literature. There at least two reasons for this shortcoming. On the one
hand, conceptual problems: lack of clarity about the nature of the dependent variable – i.e. the notion
of “good” or “bad” public policy outcomes; and insufficient conceptualization of causation between
independent and dependent variables. On the other hand, measurement problems: how to pinpoint
empirically the linkage between executive organization or presidency resources and policy outcomes.
The literature on the US presidency has attempted to overcome these problems by specifying policy
types as dependent variables, and measuring the president’s success in eliciting each type of policy. The
literature on policymaking in Latin America has specified features of the policy process as dependent
variables, and explored correlations between those features and some executive organization factors.
Still, both literatures seem far from having exhausted the topic because none appears to have
38
developed consistently comparative measures of the connections between executive organization
variables and public policy outcomes.
The evaluation of presidents’ public policy outcomes in the United States has revolved around three
empirical referents: foreign policy processes; presidential success in Congress; and the effects of
presidential politicization of the bureaucracy. The research on foreign policy processes, already cited in
section 1.3, dwells mostly on case studies and small-N comparisons crafted on such different theoretical
frameworks that comparison of processes and outcomes becomes extremely difficult and the specific
assessment of executive organization variables are typically subject to controversies of a normative,
rather than empirical, nature.
The research on presidential success in Congress, in contrast, has developed comparable concepts and
measures of both dependent and independent variables. On the dependent variable, policies have been
categorized using various typologies: by objectives, as in Lowi’s (1972) famous typology of distributive,
regulatory, redistributive, and constituent policies; by salience and complexity, as in Gormley’s (1986)
typology of regulatory policies; by size and novelty, as in Peterson’s (1990) and Light’s (1999) typologies
of new/old and large/small policies; by scope, and in Eshbaugh-Soha’s (2005, 2010) typology of major
and minor policies. As independent variables, this literature has utilized not only institutional and
partisan variables – such as unilateral institutional powers, divided government, size of presidential
legislative party, timing within the presidential term, and presidential popularity – (Edwards 1985; Bond
and Fleischer 1990, 2008; Peterson 1990; Canes-Wrone and De Marchi 2002; Barrett and Eshbaugh-Soha
2007; Eshbaugh-Soha 2010); but also organizational variables – such as the source of policy formulation,
the locus of leadership during policymaking processes, and the resources employed to influence
legislative outcomes (Light 1999; Rudalevige 2002: Larocca 2006). The relevant findings of this literature
for the present discussion show a) that policies – particularly domestic policies – tend to be smaller and
less novel because presidents lack organizational and informational resources to develop and promote
other types of policies (Light 1999; Krause 2009) except in crisis situations (Dickinson 1997), and b) that
presidents are more successful in getting legislative approval for policies developed in a decentralized,
rather than centralized, manner – as the former implies collaboration between the presidential center,
cabinet departments and congressional committees both in policy design (Rudalevige 2002: 114, 149-
150) and in shaping and pushing the agenda (Beckmann 2010: 21, 126) more than the latter. The
problem with this literature is that the linkage between executive organization variables and public
policy outcomes is mediated by presidential success in Congress: only successful presidential initiatives
enter the assessment. This begs at least two questions: on the one hand, what exactly would count as
presidential policy success; on the other hand, how are executive organization variables related to
unsuccessful presidential initiatives. The US literature has proposed several answers to the former
question, but not to the latter: presidential success may be measured either as support for presidential
initiatives in Congress (Edwards 1985; Peterson 1990; Bond and Fleischer 1990, 2008) or as presidential
ability to protect the substance of presidential legislative proposals (Rudalevige 2002; Barrett and
Eshbaugh-Soha 2007; Beckmann 2010), but little is known about why or how executive organization
39
variables influence unsuccessful initiatives beyond the fact that decentralized policy formulation
processes fare better with legislators.
The research on presidential politicization of the bureaucracy has found that politicization yields worse
outcomes than reliance on career bureaucrats or appointees with previous government experience.
Based upon wide-coverage internal polls conducted within the federal bureaucracy during the G.W.
Bush presidencies, Lewis (2008: 196) has shown that programs run by careerists or in-and-out
appointees – i.e. appointees with previous government experience – receive better assessments in
terms of program effectiveness and managerial efficacy than programs run by short-term, high-turnover
appointees. These findings, however, are not conceptually related to the usually employed typologies of
public policies, and have not yet been investigated beyond the Bush presidencies.
Evidence in LAC
The research on the impact of executive organization variables on policy outcomes in Latin America is
scant and beset by similar problems. On the one hand, the dependent variable is conceptualized not as
the type of policies using any extant typology, or as the policy issue areas, but as the features of the
policymaking process – stability, adaptability, coherence, coordination – and only marginally considering
traits of policies themselves – public-regardedness and efficiency (IDB 2006). On the other hand, the
only comparative data available on executive organization variables concerns cabinet composition and
ministerial backgrounds. The main findings in this literature hold that ministers with career backgrounds
in the civil service produce more stable policies (ibid: 149), but beyond that there are no comparatively
established patterns on the connection between executive organization, presidency resources, and
policy outcomes.
Consequently, a wide research agenda is open on this topic. Firstly, it is necessary to establish what the
policy processes for specific policy areas are and in what ways they differ. Secondly, information about
the legislative process of bills and decrees must be collected in order to assess presidential success in
advancing policy agendas, protecting their proposals from legislative amendments, and securing
consistent implementation within the executive branch. Finally, information of the staff types involved
in the drafting, bargaining, legislative steering, and implementation of policies should be gathered in
order to evaluate whether different staff types and/or staff arrangements impact presidential legislative
success and the outcomes of public policies.
Table 5 summarizes the findings of the US literature on the effects of presidency resources, the evidence
available for Latin America, and the research questions emerging from the knowledge gap.
40
Table 5 – State of the Art and Research Agenda on the Effects of Presidency Resources
Effect on… United States Latin America Research Agenda
Governing Strategy
Choices
Availability of unilateral
resources, non-partisan
cabinets and hierarchical
networks matter for
choice, but do not
determine it
Unilateral strategies yield
more unstable outcomes
than legislative strategies
Legislative strategies are
subject to cycles of
decreasing influence and
increasing effectiveness
Unilateral strategies
require combination of
unilateral resources and
enough partisan powers
to withstand legislative
repeals
Unilateral strategies only
effective when
presidential popularity
and economic conditions
are good
Effects of executive
branch organization on
governing strategies
Participation of
presidential center,
cabinet and advisory
networks in each strategy
Types of resources
employed per strategy
Cycles of influence and
effectiveness in Latin
American presidencies
Policymaking Processes Policy aims:
marginal/incremental
when good informational
resources are available or
political control is low;
innovative in response to
shocks or under
centralized political
control
Policy sources &
management: presidential
center when situations
require quick responses,
cross-area issues and little
technical expertise;
cabinet or agencies
otherwise
Structure:
centralized/decentralized
when institutionalization
of presidency is high/low;
centralization contingent
to informational costs
Dynamics: leadership
Cabinet stability
correlated to to policy
processes with high
coordination, coherence
and adaptability
Cabinet composition
designed to boost
presidential control over
processes
Types of policy aims
Sources of policy ideas
Forms of staff
involvement in policy
processes
Variations per issue areas,
organizational structure,
political and economic
conditions
41
styles and forms of staff
involvement generate
tradeoffs among political
control, information and
adaptability
Public Policy Outcomes
Policies are only novel and
large-scale in response to
crises
Presidential success on
the substance of
legislation is higher when
policy processes are
decentralized to cabinet
or agencies
Political appointees yield
worse policy outcomes
than career bureaucrats
Ministers with career
backgrounds in the civil
service produce more
stable policies
Nature of policy process
per issue area
Forms of staff
involvement in the
production of specific
types of policy outcomes
Presidential success on
the substance of
legislation across
countries and presidencies
5. Concluding thoughts
This paper has reviewed the literature on the organization of the executive branch and the presidential
resources in the United States and Latin America. The review has shown that research on Latin American
presidencies has produced strong, region-wide findings in some areas only, such as the composition of
cabinets, the nature of budgetary powers, the choice of governing strategies, and the features of
policymaking processes. In contrast, research is significantly lagging behind the benchmark set by the
literature about the US presidency on the presidential center, the presidential advisory networks, the
appointment, clearance, and intergovernmental transfer powers of the presidency, and the effects of
executive branch organization and presidential resources on policymaking processes and public policy
outcomes.
The research strategy to pursue in order to fill in the research gap varies from topic to topic. Research
on the presidential center, the powers of cabinet departments, and the presidential advisory networks
should combine statistical analysis with social network analytic strategies: this combination would be
most adequate to establish not only the determinants of different types of staff structures and
arrangements but also the nature of staff involvement in policymaking and the frequency with which
each form of involvement is mobilized by the president. Research on presidential resources should be
chiefly addressed using statistical techniques to establish the nature, conditions of emergence, and
frequency of use of each type of resource. Finally, research on the effects of executive organization and
42
presidency resources on policymaking should combine statistical analysis with case studies in order to
pinpoint the determinants of governing strategies, policy aims and ideas, policymaking structures, and
policy outcomes, and trace the mechanisms by which the former variables affect the latter.
The questions posed and the research strategies proposed on the basis of this literature review may of
course be corrected and improved upon. But the fact will remain that advancing this research may
greatly help to improve the understanding of the workings of the presidency and the causes of its
weaknesses in some of the countries in the region. It may also contribute to understanding the ways it
affects policymaking and its outcomes. More importantly, it may help reformers to identify bottlenecks
and weakest links where support may be more effective, as well as the types of reforms and
strengthening programs that may be sustainable over time. Academically, the payoff of this research
agenda can also be large. While the US based literature has advanced at a faster pace, it is still in its
infancy, particularly regarding the use of strong quantitative and comparative analysis. Researchers
taking on the Latin American executives may then be able to make a contribution that resonates beyond
the Latin American based research network of scholars.
43
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